The Jack of Hearts

A Cormac McCarthy-inspired short story based on the song lyrics for "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts'

The festival was over. The wind, hard and dry, rattled the loose boards of the cabaret as the last of the dust settled on the empty square. The light in the streets had grown pale, the sun slipping away like something taken. Men, hard men, shifted their weight at the bars, grim as wolves waiting for something that never came. The town of Redstone sat in its hollow, its bones worn thin by the weight of time.

A man came to the doorway. His hat was black as pitch, a bowler, perched with care atop his head. He was tall and lean, the kind of man that belonged to the shadows, and when he stepped inside, the room felt darker for it. The others did not turn to look. They knew what it was. There was something about the way he moved, a stillness in him that made the air hang heavy. He might’ve been a shadow, or something more. There was no sound but the rattle of the walls, the drilling somewhere behind them, the last sound of the festival dying in the distance.

The men at the tables were quiet. The women, too, sat still. None of them looked up. None of them had to.

"Set it up for everyone," the man said, and his voice was slow, like it belonged to the night.

The dealer, slow as death itself, began to arrange the cards. The room felt even more quiet now, each man shuffling in place, hands resting at the edges of tables, eyes heavy. The man in the doorway moved into the center of the room. He did not hurry. He walked as a man walks when he knows no one will stop him.

He passed a stranger at the bar, a fat man, a mustached man, and he looked down at him with that steady stare. The man in the bowler cap leaned forward, speaking in a voice like gravel scraping against stone.

"Could you kindly tell me, friend, what time the show begins?"